Vietnam Memorial hits the road

This summer has been packed with opportunities for us to get involved with our nation’s true heroes: soldiers who serve our country and the veterans who have fought to keep our nation as strong as it is today.

This year we’ve been able to equip the Disabled American Veterans mobile service offices with HP notebooks and printers that help veterans around the country receive the benefits they have earned. The DAV assists nearly a quarter million disabled veterans and their families each year, and the mobile offices have helped remotely process compensation, pension and medical claims for disabled veterans. We also were able to assists the Paralyzed Veterans of America by volunteering our services at the National Veterans Wheelchair Games. The games have grown to become the biggest wheelchair sports event in the world, with more than 600 competitors participating in 17 Olympic-style events this year.

The action has continued into the fall, as we now have the chance to honor the veterans of the Vietnam War by providing assistance to the Dignity Memorial Wall – a traveling, three-quarter scale replica of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington, D.C. The wall has been traveling across the country since 1990, bringing the memorial straight to the families and friends of those who lost their lives in Vietnam War.

The Dignity Memorial Wall, as with the Vietnam Memorial in D.C., has 58,000 names of Americans who died or were lost in the war, so finding a loved one’s name can be rather difficult. HP is providing computers to allow visitors to the wall access to a database that will tell them where a certain name is located on the 240-foot wall.

The wall will be arriving in Huntington, New York today and will be on display this weekend, October 1^st-3^rd, at Peter Nelson Park in Huntington. If you are in that area, I hope you get a chance to take a visit and see the memorial.